Fighting the good fight

WASHINGTON -- In 1864, 11 of the 36 United States did not participate in the presidential election. Was Lincoln's election therefore illegitimate?

In 1868, three years after the security situation had, shall we say, stabilized, three states (not insignificant ones: Texas, Virginia and Mississippi) did not participate in the election. Was Grant's election illegitimate?

There has been much talk that if the Iraqi election is held and some Sunni Arab provinces (perhaps 3 of the 18) do not participate, the election will be illegitimate. Nonsense. The election should be held. It should be open to everyone. If Iraq's Sunni Arabs -- barely 20 percent of the population -- decide they cannot abide giving up their 80 years of minority rule, ending with 30 years of Saddam's atrocious tyranny, then tough luck. They forfeit their chance to shape and participate in the new Iraq.

Americans are dying right now in order to give them that very chance. The United States is making a costly last-ditch effort to midwife a new, unitary Iraq. The Fallujah and related offensives are designed to reduce the brutal intimidation of the Sunni population by the dead-end Baathists and others seeking to retake the power they enjoyed under Saddam. But when those offensives are over, the Sunnis themselves -- ordinary people who out of either fear or sympathy have been giving refuge and support to the terrorist insurgents -- will have to make a choice. Either they join the new Iraq by participating in the coming election or they institutionalize the civil war their side has already begun.

People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war. It is raging before our eyes. Problem is, only one side is fighting it. The other side, the Shiites and the Kurds, are largely watching as their part of the fight is borne primarily by the United States. Both have an interest in the outcome. The Shiites constitute a majority of Iraqis and will inevitably inherit power in any democratic arrangement. The Kurds want to retain their successful autonomous zone without worrying about new depredations at the hands of the Sunni Arabs.

This is the Shiites' and Kurds' fight. Yet when police stations are ravaged by Sunni Arab insurgents in Mosul, U.S. soldiers are rushed in to fight them. The obvious question is: Why don't we unleash the fierce and well-trained Kurdish Peshmerga militias on them? (Mosul is heavily Kurdish and suffered a terrible Kurdish expulsion under Saddam.)